I often see people in the comments acting like having a fast or loud car immediately makes your dick smaller or that you have ED. And people talk about owning a car as if they’ve never gone above 40 MPH and are terrified to do so.
For context I live in a city with actually ok mass transit, don’t own a car, and prefer to bike/take the train whenever possible. Trains, trolleys, bikes, and feet are the best forms of transportation imo.
That being said, body shaming or making fun of people with physical or mental issues (that may be no fault of their own) is just shitty. It makes this community look shitty. I hate reading comments about “loud car small dick this” or “fast car ED that”. It’s unnecessary. You can shit on asshole drivers without having to stoop that low. Secondly, some women enjoy cars as well; be more creative.
Finally, don’t act like cars can’t be fun. I’m all for phasing out the automobile and revolutionizing transport by returning to the ways of olde, but cars are fun. I understand some of you are grandparents and don’t like someone revving their straight pipes mustang down your block on a Saturday morning. That’s completely reasonable. But my god does this community act like you can’t have fun in a car. I absolutely enjoy loud and fast and powerful cars, because that’s an incredible work of engineering and it simply can be fun. Going fast can be fun. Being in a car that purrs like a lion can be fun. Going offroading or drifting or racing or anything in a car can be fun.
We won’t convince people to see our side by shitting on the things they enjoy. We convince people to try and see things from our point of view by actually looking through their perspective first, and acknowledging that while cars can be fun they are not sustainable.
ETA: Some people seem to think I think public roads should still be for cars. Never did I say that. I think the appropriate place for cars is the track. I would love to convert all the roads in my city to a mixture of bike and pedestrian lanes with trolleys running down the median. But cars can be fun and a track day can absolutely be a great time.
“Fuck cars” is an easy statement to make in NYC.
“Fuck cars” isn’t a very serious statement to make in the middle of Oklahoma.
We all know why, which is why this is a joke sub. You can’t have zero cars. The world outside of Queens isn’t an endless sea of more buildings and bus stops, I’m sorry. Read a map.
I absolutely enjoy loud and fast and powerful cars
You know, I like dinosaurs. But I wouldn’t want one roaming the streets.
Yeah this place can be a bit vitriolic tbh. The body shaming is cringe and should be addressed (thanks for addressing it). I am also of the opinion that cars are very cool and fun in the right setting as well as being fascinating from an engineering perspective. Perhaps we should call eachother out on these things more? I think more people would listen if we didn’t seem like we just hated cars for being cars
Nobody above the 95 IQ range owns or enjoys loud vehicles.
I throw small to medium sized rocks at parked cars because they leave the types of damage that could plausibly just have happened from daily driving. It’s a great way to drive car owners slowly insane and to further the agenda of the Fuck Cars community.
You either really missed the point of the post, or are real bad at being funny. Least nuanced takes on the platform
I throw big rocks because I hate literally everyone and everything. You all fucking ruined my life, I want to destroy everything everyone else cares about.
Maybe you want a community that isn’t fucking called “fuck cars”. Seriously. If you don’t like it, that’s a you thing. Nobody is making you come here.
I mean, look, I come in here and argue with these guys all the time, but the sub ain’t called “I politely disagree with cars”.
but the sub ain’t called “I politely disagree with cars”.
How often have you gotten your penis stuck in the exhaust? Titles should rarely be taken literally.
Having a loud car is literally one of the most asshole things you can do.
If we replace “small dicks” with “sociopathic tendencies and pitiful personalities”, will you still complain?
No, I think that’s literally the point of the post. Insult the character, not the body. It dilutes your point
Thesaurus raises the quality of your argument, yes it does
Usually I get shit for pointing out that US urban areas continue to be built as if everyone is expected to drive their own car, and automotive lobbyists still discourage public transit projects and reducing parking requirements.
And this continuation of policies that maximize car dependency not only exacerbates the climate crisis, but the tires spread microplastics everywhere, usually with single people driving Canyonero style vehicles.
Some people in this community really, really like their cars.
I support a Car Free Society, I dont want to have to drive anywhere if I dont want to, the thought of getting on a train or tram and being able to read a book or meditate fills me with Unbridled Joy. Yet at the same time, when i do drive on roadtrips, I like to have a spotter and road reports ready and tear if up going well over 100 mph on the Interstate most of the way there, I have an EV and leap frog between charging stations, and found that if i keep it over 90 I get better efficiencies ( using less Electricity ) making it even more environmentally friendly. I LOVE driving, but having to do it just to get by in modern society is a real drag…
What the fuck? The physics here don’t make any damn sense.
At those speeds it cuts travel time drastically and the regenerative braking goes into overdrive recharching the batteries if you are going slower than 90 mph you are better off keeping it below 55 mph to achieve maximum efficiencies.
Sorry man… I hate to break (brake?) it to you but there are no EVs in existence that can get the charge back into the battery as fast as you can get it out. Some systems dissipate the excess kinetic energy into heat using ‘braking resistors’, while others simply disable Regen to the usually sudden surprise of the driver (looking at you Tesla and Toyota), and kinetic energy gets lost as heat via brake pads.
Of course it doesnt that would be perpetual motion lol. When you let off the accelerator it recharges the battery, i can go whole drives without ever touching the brake pedal. And all of that energy goes back into the battery. Elon is a cunt, but he didnt build my Car, the workers at Tesla did that. Its a great machine and a pleasure to drive, but I would sell it in a heart beat if I didnt need it to survive.
You’re missing what I’m saying. Because you cannot get that energy back into the pack very fast due to thermal constraints (there is a maximum rate one can recharge any battery, depending on the pack’s particular cell chemistry), you’re dumping quite a bit of energy when braking. Less energy loss than traditional car brakes, but still a good fraction without getting capacitors into the design.
Going over 100 is absolutely stupid, drag forces increase with the square of speed. Driving that way in a car is dangerous to everyone else, and the attempt at a physics based justification is just wrong.
Well if I’m forced to drive I will continue tear it up on the freeway, sorry not sorry, but funnily enough, I am writing this comment while riding glorious light rail in a robust Metro system. If i have to drive Im gonna have fun doing it, and get to my destination as quick as physically possible.
Yep, that’s that attitude which has resulted in this community being created.
I’ve got my share of speeding tickets as we all do, but be reasonable. The energy in an impact goes up with the square of velocity… 3x faster means 9x the impact energy, and you’re driving a particularly heavy vehicle. It might not even be your fault if something goes wrong.
I somewhat agree with you but whenever I stand next to one of those guys in a Lambo with a hot young girl who need to accelerate full BBRRAAAAAAAAAHHH until the next traffic light 30 meters down the road, I’ll still assume you have a tiny penis and are trying to make up for it. It’s not the tiny penis I care about, its the “I’m so insecure that i need a Lambo and a hot chick to feel like i matter” that irks me.
Right, I think the post is specifically trying to say that calling them insecure is fine, assuming things about their body can be bad even if you think it’s an asshole who deserves it. Like you already came up with a more creative and apt insult anyway, why throw body shaming into it?
For me, it is the complete disregard for the safety of others that disgusts. Speeding or driving a tank sized vehicle is like playing Russian roulette with the lives of others. It is deeply anti-social and unhinged from my perspective
TL;DR: I agree with your point and I’m supporting it with an argument that comes at it from the other direction. You’re arguing that big/fast/fun cars aren’t worse, while I’m about to argue that small/slow/economy cars aren’t better.
The main point of this community is to spread the word about how cars ruin cities. The reason they do that is, in large part, a matter of simple geometry: it’s because they take up so much space, both on roads and especially while parked. Specifically:
- Big trucks take up one parking space each
- Fast sporty cars take up one parking space each.
- Electric cars take up one parking space each.
- Small economy cars take up – say it with me – one parking space each.
All cars take up the same amount of space, so all cars ruin cities equally. All of them contribute to traffic. All of them beget zoning with mandatory minimum parking requirements, which forces parking lots to be inserted between destinations and ruins walkability. All of them incentivize sprawl-y, low-density development, with things like drive-thrus and big-box stores. All of them insist on being catered to in terms of infrastructure and policy, contributing to drivers’ sense of entitlement and privilege.
Substituting small cars for big ones does not solve the problems cars cause. Substituting electric cars for gasoline ones does not solve most of the problems cars cause. The only thing that solves the problems cars cause is substituting them with other transport methods entirely.
Folks, you do not get ‘credit’ for driving a small car instead of a big one or a fast one. What all the people here acting holier-than-thou about the evils of big trucks specifically are actually trying to accomplish is to absolve themselves of their responsibility for the problem as drivers, by scapegoating another subset of drivers. You are not entitled to do that! If you drive, no matter what you drive, you are part of the problem. End of!
Frankly, I consider everybody in here who rails about trucks (or some other scapegoated subset) instead of all cars to be a borderline reactionary concern troll.
I used to think like you, but this summer I visited Europe where a Volkswagen golf was a very average sized car. The parking spots were smaller, the road lanes were 9ft wide instead of 12 to 20ft wide, pedestrian crossings were never more than 20ft long (rather than 100ft wide for our 8 lane stroads). . The country in question had an automotive fatality rate that was less than 10% of my state’s average. It blew my mind how much of a difference that made.
That trip taught me that car size does matter. Big cars kill people at higher rates and they force all the roads and parking spots to get bigger in turn. It also create an arms race where people buy bigger and bigger vehicles to be safe from the other oversized vehicles.
Larger cars also waste more fuel and cause more damage to our roads.
Finally, cars are so big these days they often take up two parking spots because the vehicles are too big for the drivers to consistently park within their lines or if you park next to a gaint SUV / pickup then the owner will wait for you and scream in your face (this has happened to me more than once.)
So I fully and strongly reject the idea that small cars are in any way just as harmful to cities as tank sized pickups and SUVs.
I challenge you to post the name of the city in Europe you visited, and then look up its population density and transportation mode share.
Reykjavík. Population density is 451 people per km2 and transportation mode share is only 5% public transit. It has around the same population density of the US city I live in and yet only 10% of the traffic fatalities. Cars are still a problem there, undeniably, but it is proof that car dependency doesn’t have to be as dystopian and hellish as it has become in the US. The size of cars matters. The price of gas matters. The way we design roads and the size of each lane matters.
Reykjavik – and Iceland in general – is tiny in terms of population: less than 250k in the entire metro area. Of course cars are going to work less-bad there than in any place with a decently-big population! It’s not comparable.
Wake me up when you can credibly claim that some European city that’s actually big can be car-dependent and magically somehow work because everybody’s driving VW Golfs or whatever.
the road lanes were 9ft wide instead of 12 to 20ft wide,
As a trained traffic engineer, I will inform you that that just isn’t true. In reality, lanes in the US are typically 9-12 feet wide, and NACTO recommends against anything greater than 11.
The only places you’re going to plausibly find widths greater than 12 feet are 1-lane freeway ramps and streets with unmarked on-street parking (which means it’s really two lanes, not one).
pedestrian crossings were never more than 20ft long (rather than 100ft wide for our 8 lane stroads)
This is a function of the number of lanes – i.e., the number of cars, not the size of the cars.
Finally, cars are so big these days they often take up two parking spots because the vehicles are too big for the drivers to consistently park within their lines or if you park next to a gaint SUV / pickup then the owner will wait for you and scream in your face (this has happened to me more than once.)
No, they do not “often” take up two parking spots. You can go look at any random parking lot to see how nonsense that claim is. Alternating patterns of filled and empty spaces are just not a thing that happens anywhere.
I happen to think there are some awesome cars for sale in an aesthetic sense as well as a practical one, the only thing I hate is the existence of the obligation to own one.
My favorite posts on here are ones that address the underlying causes that make us want to say “fuck cars.”
As a resident of northern Utah, I see all the time the negative results of the intersection of car-centric city planning, religious idiocy, and “small government” conservatism.
I like cars. I don’t like the political system that allowed car companies to circumvent environmental standards and push ugly ass trucks and SUVs.
I love going for long drives to see new places. I hate that so many interstates were built to destroy “undesirable” neighborhoods.
For example, the I-190 from Buffalo to Niagara Falls ruins public access. The Robert Moses Parkway that runs along the Niagara River to the Falls does the same. There isn’t the political will to fix these things.
That pisses me off
I love driving. I don’t like drivers who have received minimal training because the state thinks having a drivers licence is more of a right than a privilege.
I think everyone should have to pass a more rigorous road test every 5 years. I think anyone who buys an RV should have a Class B CDL.
I don’t like roads that make it dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, etc.
I want there to be better public transportation. I want high speed rail.
Are there drivers who are absolute assholes and drive unsafely or intentionally cause excessive air/noise pollution? Yeah. They should be shamed for their behavior.
However, not all bicyclists obey the rules of the road. I rode an electric scooter for almost 18 months as my primary mode of transportation. I had more close calls with cyclists and other scooter riders going the wrong way or ignoring traffic devices than with cars.
I absolutely enjoy loud and fast and powerful cars,
Cool! You won’t mind if I go spin up a diesel generator upwind of your house then, right?
I just really enjoy diesel generators and your opinion on my noise and air pollution shouldn’t weigh heavily on the scale of what I’m allowed to do. It’s only fair!
I’m sorry bro but if I have to listen to your fucking ICE going up and down my otherwise quiet street at all hours of the day then I am allowed to call you small dicked. If you are offended by this, I will assume it true.
Go to a fucking race track and leave the rest of us out of your dumb hobby.
Read the edit. I never advocated for public roads being used for cars. I acknowledge that the frustration against cars is reasonable. But if you simply can’t enjoy a fast and loud car in the appropriate setting, then that’s a you problem and not a me problem. You’re absolutely right that the appropriate setting is a track or out in the middle of nowhere, not residential or even commercial streets. But cars absolutely can be enjoyable in the right setting.
Pivot. If you’re serious about keeping it on the track or somewhere isolated, great, but let’s not pretend that’s what anybody is upset about.
